Pilled-maxxing

Language Log 2025-05-24

A couple of relatively recent English compounding forms are getting more common in the media: X-pilled and X-maxxing.

"The Man Who ‘A.G.I.-Pilled’ Google" "Red-pilled culture is corroding young men’s brains" "This mom ‘de-pilled’ her teen son. What is that and why are people praising her?" "Are you pope-pilled? Here's your guide to the 2025 Conclave." "California Democrats get ‘abundance-pilled’ as they look for a path forward" "Are Q-Pilled Family Members Lost for Good?"

"What the Hell Is Testosterone-Maxxing and Why Are Gym Bros Doing It?" "“Sleepmaxxing” Is Trending—I’d Caution Against It" "Happy hour-maxxing: An Old Port bar crawl that gets you more for less" "OPINION: Stop the protein maxxing, start eating what you want" "What is the aura maxxing ? The tik tok trend explained" "WTF Is ‘Fertility Maxxing’? Why It’s Gaining Attention Among People Trying to Get Pregnant"

It's pretty obvious what these mean. The etymology of maxxing is clear, though the double x is an innovation, and the cultural history of the idiom needs exploring — it hasn't made it into Wiktionary yet, much less the OED.

Most people will guess that the pilled forms come from the 1999 movie The Matrix, where Neo is given a choice between red (real world) and blue (Matrix) pills.

The pills in The Matrix may have been based on an earlier usage, in Ronald Howard's 1980 paper "On making life and death decisions", which features a hypothetic choice between a white pill and a black pill , the latter being described by Wiktionary as "A hypothetical pill with a specific probability of causing death, which one is offered a large sum of money in order to take, as a philosophical dilemma." But then black pill was re-invented post-Matrix, with a sense Wiktionary glosses as "A notional pill taken by those who have adopted a nihilistic, usually (but not necessarily) far-right philosophy, especially incels who believe unattractive men will never be sexually or romantically successful."